28 Monroe Place

Six stories of brick across a 57.33-foot frontage and a 90.5-foot building depth, with a 111-foot lot leaving rear yard behind it. The elevation is plain — LPC records leave the style undetermined, and the building does not pretend to its neighbors' ornament. What it has instead is a postwar plan: an efficient core, roughly six apartments to a floor lettered A through F, and windows on both the Monroe Place front and the rear.

The combination history is the important part of the unit picture. DOB filings record 4D merged with 4E in 2006, 6D merged with 6E and 6F in 2015, and 4D, 4E and 4F consolidated in 2019 — all under the department's TPPN 3/97 protocol. Three combinations in thirteen years, in a thirty-five-unit building, is a meaningful rate, and it tells a buyer two things: the board approves this work, and the natural response to a compact floor plan here has been to buy the neighbor. Anyone acquiring a single line should ask what is adjacent, who owns it, and whether the line can be combined later. That optionality is a real part of the asset.

The roof deck filed in 2006 is the building's one documented amenity beyond the elevator, and in a six-story building where most apartments have no private outdoor space it is worth confirming and worth marketing. Exterior work of every kind, windows included, runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

28-30 Monroe Place Owners Corp. has operated the building since the 1988 closing, and DOB filings name Siren Management as agent of record across 2001 to 2015. Current management should be confirmed directly.

The capital record deserves careful reading, because it is busy: a masonry repair program along the east and west façades in 2001; a 65-foot heavy-duty sidewalk shed during façade repair in 2002; pipe scaffolding for remedial repair in 2009 and again in 2012; façade and roof repairs with a heavy-duty shed in 2015; pipe scaffolding for remedial repairs in 2016; and a new metal chimney liner and offset the same year. That is four distinct remedial-repair episodes across fifteen years on a thirty-five-apartment building.

Taken alone the pattern is unremarkable — a postwar masonry building with two exposed elevations will cycle, and a board that files and repairs is doing its job. It is nonetheless a reason to underwrite the capital picture rather than assume it. Ask for several years of audited financial statements, the mortgage terms and maturity, the reserve balance, the full assessment history since 2001, and the most recent FISP report. On a thirty-five-shareholder corporation, one façade cycle divides into a number every shareholder feels.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00238-0024) and verified listing data. Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified by The Roebling Team research desk. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price.

Apartments here are compact — plan for it. About 780 gross square feet per unit on average. Measure the specific apartment, and evaluate whether the adjacent line could ever be acquired; combination is the established path to scale here, and the board has approved it repeatedly.

Underwrite the façade cycle. Remedial repairs in 2001, 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2016 mean you read the engineering reports and the assessment history before you set your number, not after.

Confirm the roof deck. Filed in 2006, it is the building's principal shared amenity. Verify current access, hours and house rules with the board.

Get every policy in writing. Pets, subletting, pied-à-terre use, financing minimums and any flip tax are undocumented here. Assume nothing from district norms.

Lead with the street, then the scarcity. Monroe Place carries genuine weight, and this is the only postwar elevator building on it. Name the church, the courthouse and the quiet — then note that nothing like this building can be built inside the district again.

Name Leo Stillman. A documented architect with a body of work — Walden Terrace, the Beaux-Arts training, the mid-century idiom — separates the listing from the anonymous postwar stock buyers assume this building belongs to.

Market the combination optionality. Three approved combinations in thirteen years is a fact worth stating. It reframes a compact apartment as a position rather than a ceiling.

Get ahead of the capital file. Buyers' attorneys will find the repeated façade work. A clear record of completed, funded repairs with the current engineer's report attached turns the building's busiest liability into evidence of an attentive board.

If you're considering 28 Monroe Place, also evaluate:

• 22 Monroe Place — the 1927 Freehof elevator co-op a few doors south on the same block; the prewar alternative at the same address
• 21 Monroe Place — the ten-unit walk-up across the street; house-scale living on the same block
• 123 Pierrepont Street — small co-op at the Pierrepont corner of the same tax block
• 40 Clinton Street — the 1964 co-op tower on the same block's Clinton Street frontage; the district's postwar high-rise
• 24 Clinton Street — 1926 co-op on the same block; the prewar mid-size peer
• 70 Clark Street — 1960 postwar co-op two blocks north; the closest peer in vintage and scale
• 245 Henry Street — 1955 postwar co-op on the district's southern edge
• 96 Schermerhorn Street (Boerum Court) — postwar co-op alternative just outside the district
• 15 Clark Street — prewar co-op peer at the block's Clark Street end
• 153 Henry Street — the large prewar elevator co-op one block west; the service alternative